$29 Million Awarded to Family of Humanitarian Worker Killed in Ethiopian Airlines Crash

Micheál 'Mick' Ryan, a humanitarian worker and Chief Engineer with the World Food Programme, was killed in the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash that also claimed the lives of all 157 people on board.

The Boeing 737 MAX aircraft involved in the disaster had been implicated in another fatal crash just months earlier, the Lion Air disaster in Indonesia in October 2018, which killed 189 people.

Boeing later acknowledged that its MCAS anti-stall software was a contributing factor in the Ethiopian Airlines crash and agreed to pay a fine of €224m and spend over €400m on improving internal safety and compliance programmes for making false presentations about key software.

Naoise Connolly Ryan, Mick's widow, pursued a civil case against Boeing and was awarded $29 million by a Chicago jury.